


Follow the Lights (They'll Lead You Home)

by singingwithoutwords



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fairy Lights, Fairy Tale Elements, natasha is an ancient badass monster, tony thinks fairy lights are less dangerous than kidnappers but we love him anyway, withoutwords needs to stop witing things he has no idea how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 15:25:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17327549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singingwithoutwords/pseuds/singingwithoutwords
Summary: Natalia chose to follow the lights because she had nothing left to lose.Tony did because it seemed like a good idea at the time.In both cases, the choice was the right one to make.





	1. Chapter 1

The trouble with Natalia was that she was always  _ too _ or  _ not _ .  She was too loud, too forceful, too assertive, too bold, too much.  She was not graceful, not beautiful, not delicate, not feminine, not humble, not enough.  Every description of her was prefaced with one word or the other, because nothing about her was right.

No one in the village wanted anything to do with Natalia.  The last of her family succumbed to illness or age by the time she was fifteen, none of the boys wanted to marry her (and frankly  _ she _ had no desire to marry any of  _ them _ either), and none of the girls were willing to displease their own families or potential husbands by befriending her.

Natalia lived at the edge of the village, in a cottage she maintained herself because she was too clever and too mannish.  She wore trousers and cut her hair short because she was not proper and not civilised. She hunted and trapped in the forests because she was too foolish and too stubborn.  She ignored the whispers and refused to ask for any help because she was too proud and too used to having only herself.

She was not quite yet twenty the first time she saw the lights for herself.

Everyone knew the lights, of course.  Her own mother and grandmother had told her tales of them, of lights that lured away the unwary and led them to cruel fates in the stillness between the ancient trees.  She heard the other villagers warning their children not to try to trap the lights, because they would be punished if they did. She listened to other hunters tramping through the underbrush talk repeat old tales of wishes that could be granted if one succeeded in trapping the lights.

The first time she saw them, she signed a ward against evil and backed away.  She was too foolish to stay out of the forest like women should, but she was not foolish enough to follow.

Not yet.

She saw the lights often after that, almost every time she hunted.  She saw them in morning and twilight gloom, at midday when the sun’s light all but hid them from sight.  She saw them on her rare night hunts, floating in neat lines like a procession of fairy torches.

At first she warded herself at each sighting and fled the lights.  By the time she was twenty-two, she stood her ground and watched, but resisted the urge to follow.

At twenty-three, she followed only a short while before turning back.

At twenty-four, she wondered if the fate she would follow to was better or worse than the ridicule and borderline hostility of the villagers.

At twenty-five, after poor harvests and a bout of sickness amongst the children, the villagers branded her a witch, burned her cottage and drove her out, and Natalia saw no reason to resist the lights any longer.

With soot still on her face and no cloak to ward off the late autumn wind, she sat on the forest floor and waited for the lights to lead her to her doom.

The sun drifted low in the sky, casting the forest in gloom, and the first light appeared.  As if it knew her intentions, it drifted in a circle around her, then a bit away. She stood and followed, and it drifted further, joined by more and more lights as they traveled.

Night fell and the cold cut through her, but still she followed the lights, until they led her to a clearing where the full moon shone on a small pond.  The lights swirled and danced around each other like windblown leaves, and she saw in their dance a question.

_ What do you want? _

“I want to belong,” she answered, wrapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to find warmth.  “I want to be accepted.”

_ Just that? _

She opened her mouth to say yes, but closed it and shook her head instead.  “I want to be loved,” she added. “I want someone to love me for who I am, as I am.”

The lights altered their dance, swooping and pulsing like laughter.

_You can have all you wish,_ their dance told her.   _But there will be a price._

“I will pay it,” she said, unable to think of any price worse than the cold uncaring night slowly killing her.

_ You must wait. _

“I will,” she promised.  “All my life if I must.”

_ You cannot wait long enough as you are.  You must change a little, to wait so long. _

“How?” she asked, and the lights showed her.

Natalia closed her eyes and considered her options: change as the lights wished, wait unendingly in isolation with only hope to sustain her; or refuse and die here, utterly alone, empty of anything but cold.  In the end, it was no choice at all, for someone who wanted enough to follow the lights this far.

“I will wait,” she said, and the lights changed her.

Their work done, the lights scattered.

Changed, Natalia retreated into the trees once more to wait.


	2. Chapter 2

She could move quickly, but chose to go slowly, for her limbs were fragile jagged misshapen things that shattered easily and were slow to repair, the once-flawless crystal now clouded and clustered like brittle makeshift scars.  Her hair, red like blood even before the change, hung long and lank and tangled to hide what remained of her face, cloudy crystal scars and sickly dim green lights for eyes.

Something stirred the forest mists.  She crouched, elongated arms and legs and curved spine making her seem in the darkness nothing more than a cluster of dead trees, as a light and another light and another drifted past.  They moved unhurried in a loose line between the trees, and soon enough she heard the sound of footsteps. They hurried, beating against the ground in the rhythm of a frantic run, and behind them came a counterpart of many more footfalls.  Someone being chased, and the lights were trying to lead them to her.

She waited breathlessly as moments passed and the footsteps grew closer, and finally a man burst into the little clearing, and the lights winked out.

“Why did I do that?” the man asked.  “That was stupid, Stark, you  _ know _ that was stupid, why did you do that?”

He looked about a moment, then seemed to spy her, hurrying to duck behind her as those who followed arrived.

She knew them, or knew their type; witless fools who pledged themselves to cruel men, who hurt for the sake of hurting and craved only power over others.  She didn’t know why they wanted the man, but she knew she did not want them to have him.

She could move quickly, when she chose.  Two of the thugs were dead before they knew she was upon them.  Another died before they could react to her attack.

Those who remained were armed, with horrid weapons that attacked from beyond her reach, gouging and shattering what passed for her flesh, leaving her to bleed dust and shards onto the forest floor.  She screamed at them but did not falter, even when one of the projectiles struck her arm just below the elbow and hand and forearm fell, severed, onto the muddy leaves.

She dispatched another and turned at the sound of a cry, to find the quarry the men had been seeking standing over the last of them, a rock held in both hands.  Even standing over a vanquished foe, he seemed-

“ _ Malen’kiy _ ,” she heard her own voice say, and he looked up at her.  There was no fear in his expression: only indignation.

“ _ Ne ya _ !” he protested, tossing his rock aside, and she couldn’t help the unfamiliar sound of laughter welling up in her.  “Besides, everyone probably looks tiny to you, you’re eight feet tall.”

“Taller,” she corrected, because he was not the only one who could surprise others with their knowledge of languages.

He moved closer, peering to see her in the dark, and he made a soft sound of pain.  “Shit. Are you okay?”

She followed his gaze to her broken arm.  “It will grow back,” she assured him. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“I highly doubt you saved me just to eat me, so not really,” he said, shrugging.  “Thanks for that, by the way. What’s your name?”

She stared as he stepped right up to her, touched her, lightly exploring the splintered stump that would hang even with his head if she chose to stand upright.  “… Natalia.”

“Nice to meet you, Natalia,” he said, with unquestionable sincerity.  “I’m Tony.” He reached, gesturing impatiently like a small child, until she lowered her head enough for him to see her face clearly.  “Jeez, you’ve had it rough, haven’t you?”

He continued to chatter, bright and fearless.  In years to come, she would never be able to say with certainty how he coaxed her from the ancient forest that had been her home before mankind harnessed the power of coal.  She could say with absolute certainty that she never once regretted agreeing.

Once, eons ago, she had followed the lights looking for someone to love her as she was.  Curled protectively around the bright spark that was her Tony, she could admit they had led her to that, and to so much more.


End file.
